Green IslandA Few Hours In Peru
April 10th 2010 06:11
While everybody remembers the infamous dark days of Pinochet in Chile and the 15,000 people that Jorge Rafael Videla’s junta ‘disappeared’ in Argentina’s Dirty War, few people noticed or cared in the world that Peru has seen more than its fair share of military dictatorships, censorship, torture and political violence. In the Twentieth Century Peru has had six military juntas: 1914-15, 1930-31, 1933-39, 1948-50, 1962-63 and 1968-80. The army, old Spanish family industrialists and American obsessions with communism succeeded in continually disrupting democracy in Peru and quelling the angry protests of the huge Indigenous population. And on top of this, in the 1980s Maoist guerrillas killed somewhere in the region of 70,000 people. In short Peru hasn’t had a high profile dictator – a poster boy like Mao, Pot or Stalin – but, nevertheless, it has been thoroughly fucked over by megalomaniacs in uniforms.
The Twenty First Century has witnessed much happier times in Peru. Unemployment is still rife and in 2009 39 people died in clashes between Indigenous people and government troops, but at least the economy is stable and the people are allowed to fairly elect their leaders. Times have never been great for Peru. The country has vast stretches of high Andean territory and Amazonian forest that hold a population subsisting on agriculture. Until recently it was common for doctors and policeman to drive taxis during their off hours to make ends meet. There is a type of grim stoicism present in the Peruvian psyche. They know that their country has been fucked up by greedy politicians and industrialists. They know that many things are still very wrong in their country. So they turn to family and friendships to find solidarity and sincerity.
One thing that has changed in Peru now that democracy has taken more than a foothold in the country is striking. Whereas General Manuel A. Odria hired henchmen and off duty police to violently quell strikes, the present government allows strikers free reign to their desires to publicly vocalize their grievances. And while I was in Peru I had first-hand experience of this liberalism.
We had just completed our mini-tour of the area around Cusco rich in Inca culture, which culminated in the walk up the mountain next to Aguas Caliente to visit Machu Picchu. On coming down the mountain we took the over-priced train to Ollantaytambo and then a much more reasonably priced minibus back to Cusco. It was late at night and the minibus driver in typical Peruvian style scared the bejesus out of the passengers by spending 50% of the journey driving on the wrong side of the road, taking every turn in the mountain road like it was a game of Peruvian roulette.
In Cusco all the hostels were full. The staff at the various backpacker places that we tried were singularly unhelpful (except for an Argentine working in Loki). They ignored our homeless plight. In the end a fellow traveller told us about a cheap local hotel in the centre.
The next day we walked to the outskirts of the city and found the bus station. We bought two tickets on an overnight bus to Nazca. We were warned about possible strikes on the road but we were reassured that any delays would just be for a ‘few hours’.
And so it was that my wife and I left Cusco on a bus heading for Nazca in the early evening. It wasn’t a luxury bus like those found in Argentina and Brazil, but it was a step up from a Bolivian death trap on wheels.
We munched on biscuits, read our books and fell asleep in our sleeping bags.
We both awoke just after dawn to notice that the bus wasn’t moving. I got out of my sleeping bag and went outside for a piss. While urinating I noticed a long line of buses, cars and trucks stretching to the horizon behind us. We were parked up on the right side of the road. The left lane was scattered with small boulders.
I went back in the bus to tell my wife about our forced stop. We gradually pieced together what was going on. It was the strike we had been warned about. Some foreigners were trying to push the rocks off the road. The Peruvians were slowly filing out of the long line of vehicles and finding spots to lie around in the sun. It was a beautiful mountain location with rocky terrain and green fields where goats grazed. None of the Peruvians looked at all upset or concerned with our forced delay.
I went for a further explore. I walked to the head of the line of vehicles and came to a narrow part of the road where the local people had set up an extensive rock barricade. On either side of the road was a rocky promontory. Scattered over the high ground were locals with Bolivian style wrappings and ruddy weather stained faces. The ringleaders were at the head of the barricade calmly explaining their situation to the disparate crowd wanting to pass. Behind the ringleaders some belligerent-looking women sat on boulders. They were sitting on the rocks to prevent anyone from moving them. Nobody was going to fuck with those Inca females.
Negotiations or loud squabbles constantly went back and forth between drivers and passengers and the spokespeople for the town. Even with my very limited grasp of Spanish and Peruvian politics I could tell that the talks were merely formal and that no amount of remonstration was going to facilitate our leaving the area any time soon. What was interesting that there was no real aggression or animosity in the air. I wondered if a bunch of Brits or Yanks could keep their equanimity under similar circumstances. The answer was to shortly manifest itself.
A frustrated gringo created a mini-episode in the high drama of the stand-off. He was a young man with a Mediterranean brashness about him. He started to single-handedly push rocks off the road. Perhaps he was expecting the rest of the crowd to join in. Instead he was met with a shower of rocks thrown from the high ground. These people weren’t fucking around. No one was going to pass. Before he got seriously injured the backpacker gave up and walked off in a silent tantrum.
I found some other tourists and chatted with them. One backpacker told me that this had been going on for days. The locals would detain traffic for up to 12 hours at a time to protest the lack of a paved road through their town. Apparently a couple of Israeli’s had been caught in a similar fix a couple of days before and had taken their backpacks and walked past the road block and into town. They holed up in a hotel and caught the next bus the following morning. I considered this option but reasoned that it was fruitless since it wouldn’t get me to Nazca any quicker and would cost me more money than just waiting out the strike.
As the sun climbed in the sky, more and more Peruvians got out their transport and started having picnics. The protesters managed to get a megaphone to air their grievances more effectively. Even the police showed up and took one look at the situation and drove back off again. The fact that the police could get through the road block depressed me. If they could get a path cleared for their car to pass surely they could slightly amplify their power and get one lane open to let the traffic waiting on both sides of the block to trickle through. It seemed not. Perhaps the police were there to ensure the citizenry of Dusty del Valle could exercise their constitutional right to protest.
My wife and I were getting hungry and thirsty and so I went off in search of breakfast. My wife was not feeling great. For over two weeks she had been suffering from a fluey cold. She had bravely coughed and spluttered her way up and down the mountain to see Machu Picchu and now she discretely shed mucous and rattled her larynx in the muggy atmosphere of our stationary bus.
I soon found a woman by the side of the road with a huge pot of beans and potato stew. I bought two helpings and went back to share the rations with my wife. It didn’t taste too bad and it was cheap. We sat in the bus and waited.
As the day progressed we saw a whole stream of women and children walking across the fields between the town and the road block carrying baskets. They were doing a roaring trade in supplying the wants of the stranded travellers.
At the same time a pair of men walked down the line of queued up vehicles and daubed political slogans on the windscreens in white paint. I asked about the writing on the vehicles. Somebody told me it said ’48 hours’. That seemed really poor news to me but nobody else looked concerned about the implication of this threat. Perhaps I was reading too much into the graffiti - maybe it was about that film with Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte.
48 Hours
By mid afternoon I was getting thoroughly fed up and bored with waiting around. The police would come and it would look like some type of agreement had been reached, only for the police to drive off and leave us again to our fate.
By 4pm I started feeling very peculiar. The feeling gained momentum and turned into nausea and stomach pain. I had no idea what the matter was with me and tried to grit my teeth and bare it. Not for long. I was soon running out of the bus and ducking behind a bush to quickly evacuate my bowels. Nasty watery diarrhea.
After three lightning trips to my al fresco crapping point I started to feel a different type of stomach convulsion and before I knew it I was vomiting beans and potatoes and shitting murky, lumpy water. I was getting myself in a fine state.
At my darkest point I shat and spewed 3 times in ten minutes. On one occasion I was slow to whip down my pants and managed to soil myself, a fruity dribble down the leg.
As the sun went down the police made another appearance. This time they had decided to take more decisive action. They were there in greater numbers and had guns. I watched with a crowd of travellers as they went up to the rock barricade and confronted the most belligerent of the protesters. The plump women sitting on the rocks gave the cops hard indigenous stares before agreeing to abandon their cause. It seemed the time had come (gratefully not 48 hours later). After all, most of the road side hawkers had sold all their wares and were trundling home counting their Nuevo Sols. Locals and passengers alike helped to clear the road. I too lent a hand between bouts of venting the poison from my body.
People got back in their vehicles and waited expectantly. The protesting locals grumbled but begrudgingly abandoned the high ground and followed the money home. No more rocks were thrown.
As this was going on a policeman noted my ducking-behind-a-rock plight. Indeed my last stomach upheaval had given me so little warning that I had had to vomit just feet away from the man in blue. A conversation about me started up. The policeman, our bus driver and a couple of other random Peruvians debated my situation as if I wasn’t there. My smattering of Spanish was put into full action. I clenched by anus muscles and smiled weakly and insisted that I didn’t want a medico; rather I wanted to get to Nazca. The policeman rightly assessed my claims to being bueno was mentira. With the help of a Peruvian with some English he told me that he would get a path cleared for me immediately and get me to a hospital in town pronto. I was touched by the policeman’s compassion and astounded at his promised alacrity in getting me medical help. I used the translator to politely explain that I had taken some medicine (some carcinogenic Bolivian antibiotics that I had left over from my last bout of shitting fever) and that more than a hospital I wanted to get to Nazca. The policeman seemed to understand my sentiments and wished me well and left to aid in the road clearance operation.
As is so often the case in life, when you think the waiting is over and that finally something is going to happen, your hopes are cruelly dashed. You are held in another infuriating limbo of waiting. In our case, we the folk wanting to go north, were deemed to be of secondary importance to the folk wanting to go south towards Cusco. We sat in our greasy bus seats for nearly an hour as vehicles rolled past our stationary bus. It wasn’t until 6.30pm that we finally lurched forward. A unanimous cheer filled the bus.
By my estimation we had stopped at 5.30am. That meant we had been delayed a ‘few hours’ that totaled 13 hours in all. I was given a thorough lesson in the Peruvian concept of time.
Darkness fell as we drove through the defiant little town that had made hundreds possibly thousands of people wait by the side of the road for a ‘few hours’. They were justified in their grievances; their town was a dust bowl because the road was without concrete. It was a no where place, probably not in any guide book. I’ve forgotten the name of the place.
The remaining journey lasted about two and a half hours. It was hell for my stomach with the Bolivian antibiotics curdling my gastric juices as we lurched to the left and then to the right in a series of switchbacks up and down mountains. I felt motion sickness had penetrated to my very DNA. Half way through one ascent I could hold no longer and desperately banged on the driver’s cabin door and signaled for him to stop. I couldn’t bear the thought of the bus toilet. It was like a Glastonbury festival toilet after the thirteen hour delay. If I went in there I feared I might puke myself inside out. After several knocks the driver relented and slowed down the bus. I ran out into the dark and crapped and chucked over the side of a precipice. It was cathartic release. That beans and potato road side meal had been furiously potent. I had reached zero. I dragged myself back on the bus and found my seat next to my coughing wife. Within twenty minutes we were both asleep.
At 9.40pm we awoke in the desert on the edge of Nazca town. At the bus terminal we functioned on auto-pilot. We pulled our packs from the pile on the roadside and found a taxi. We made it to a hostel got a room, had a shower and a cup of coca tea with a spliff and then slept solidly.
The next morning I didn’t feel that much better. From the safety of the other end of a ‘few hours’ I couldn’t feel any great anger at the locals from Dusty de Valle who had poisoned and delayed me. These were the nameless mountain masses, poor as rocks and of no consequence to the political powers in Lima. They had one thing to bargain with. Their town lay between two of the most famous tourist destinations in Peru and indeed all of South America – Machu Picchu and the Nazca Lines. The only way to get the attention of the world beyond the goat grazing fields was to disrupt this key transport route. The disenfranchised were empowered by having a road through their anonymous town that linked two tourist cash cows. It is not inconceivable that one day the cement trucks will descend upon Dusty de Valle and the locals will be made to wait a ‘few days’ while they lay a road through the heart of the town. Only I suspect that they are far more immured to suffering than I could ever imagine.
And at least they are now allowed to protest.
I promise that the adventures of Candy and Shnade are coming soon.
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